First Presbyterian Church

 

James

I am sitting in my office for the first time in two weeks and trying hard to hold on to Africa.  But my life is quickly filling up with the old stuff - work, grocery lists, car repairs, what’s for dinner.  It is already obvious, one day back, that it won’t be easy to maintain an intimacy with Kenya.  But I am conflicted about what to do with all that I have experienced on this pilgrimage.  

I remain stunned by the degree of poverty and suffering I saw in Africa. There is no justice in the fact that I throw away good food every day while I personally now know people who are starving to death.  But “stunned” is a temporary state that gives me permission to remain immobile for only so long.  It’s what happens next that frightens me.  What if nothing happens? What if I forget the faces of the hungry people I met last week?  I pray God will help me to remember all the things I would rather forget.

I miss James.  He is 15, a gifted artist.  While in Kenya, James hung out on our porch every night until we insisted he go home, always after dark.  Nobody at James’ house cares where he goes or what time he comes home.  I don’t know what God would have me do about James, the Kenyan artist with a gentle spirit but no hope, but his burdens are heavy on my heart.  I don’t want to let my to-do list crowd James out.  God, I pray you will stalk me like a thief in the night until I step up to the plate for James in a way pleasing to you.

Alice and I were an “item” while I was in Kenya.  I love Alice and I hope she loves me too.  Alice is 14 but says she is 12.  She lies about her age because disease has kept her small and she is ashamed of her size.  Alice told me that she had never had a birthday party or a birthday cake her entire life.  On our last night in Kenya, our team gave her both.  It was such an easy wish to fill.  It required no sacrifice.  Please, Lord, give me the courage to make sacrifices, huge Holy sacrifices, in Your name and for the glory of Your kingdom.

God loaned me His eyes and His ears and His heart to encounter His forgotten children in Kenya.  I wore God’s heart as my own for 14 days.  I pray I never forget how it feels to walk around with a heart broken by the suffering of others.  If I forget, the loan was a waste of His time and my life.

“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”  Matthew 25:35-36

Sitting by a fire on a July evening is a gift of 7,500 feet on the equator.  The team is all gone, now safely arrived in the US.  Tomorrow morning begins my 30-hour+ journey of cars, trains and airplanes. Before I leave I’ll fulfill the old Africa tradition of kissing the four walls in anticipation of returning.

But tonight is one for reflection and celebration.

Our team was a rich gift both to the Africans and me. I know that Jesus saw each of them as a gift as well.  So much witnessed and experienced. Makes me smile.

My last day though is also one of melancholy. A long litany of final meetings, African thank you’s and reminisces. As the day draws to close and the fire roars, I have my porch kids still here, unanxious to go to the places they live.  I’m reminded that when I leave, the safe place they’ve found here will disappear and the reality of another life will sink in fully – for them and for me.  Christ has mysteriously blessed me with their same heart and I fear for them and for me. But then Christ has also blessed me with the same hope and I rejoice.

The final victory is won and whether we live in the undeserved freedom and plenty of the US or the challenging world of much of Africa, He smiles on us all and promises us an eternity of joy.

So I prepare to leave, and I pause to thank Him. To thank Him for my life and its intersection with those I witness here in a land where the Garden and Gehenna reside so near. And as I offer praise by the summer flames, He speaks to me and says, “It is finished.”

And in this completed work I think of what it will be for all of us to play and rejoice together on His porch eternally.

Makes me smile.

PS: I’ll be back.

 

 

Whenever I’m able, I worship with the patients and staff of Nazareth Hospital.  Services are held every Sunday morning at 9:00 in the main corridor – exactly wide enough for three plastic chairs and an aisle just broad enough to navigate the patients who choose to walk or be wheeled in. As they do, goat-skinned drums beat out a steady rhythm and perfectly-pitched African voices cry out in praise through a language I don’t perfectly understand, yet which feels so very familiar.  

“You are most welcome.”  Hospitality resides deep in the African heart.  A guest is always valued as perhaps an angel unaware.  So it this morning.  “Most welcome” is the phrase repeated over and over as people gather to encounter a Word of hope, desperately challenged by the illness and suffering each carries.

Granted, for me there is a challenge to this “most welcome.” Not only are the songs and prayers in a language I barely grasp; as a non-Catholic, the heart of worship, the Eucharist, is not open to me.  There were days in the militant dawn of my youth where this distance would distract me but not in this late afternoon of my days, when I sit, gratefully drawn in to taste the presence of Christ through the lips of others.

A priestly African hand gracefully lifts a bleached white Host over the black bowed heads of grey pajama-ed patients, blue-bloused nursing students, and white-jacketed doctors. The color of grace deepens the timbre of his voice, “This is my body, given for you.” 

As the sound of the Gospel reverberates off these stone hospital walls, feasting on the faces of the faithful, I feel most welcome.

 

“You can’t walk in someone else’s shoes until you take your own shoes off,” Jim Wood reminds the group before our nightly devotion. It is a simple task that has become exponentially meaningful as our pilgrimage continues.

Two days ago, I returned to Nazareth Hospital and hesitantly removed my shoes. They had served their purpose as a sanitary barrier between my clean white feet and the sewage running through the streets of Korogocho.

Korogocho, literally translates to “deep trash,” is synonymous with dirty, and is inevitably compared to the gates of hell to anyone who passes through its devastated streets.

The air is ripe with the mixed stench of humans and disregarded animals. It looks as though God has changed the color setting of Korogocho to “dull” in comparison to the brilliance of the other places I have seen in Kenya. My body was in constant limbo. Do I look forward or turn away? Do I breathe or stealthily shield my nostrils from the plagued air? Do I feel the textures around me or dig deep for the non-existent item in my empty pockets?

We meandered through an alley, sometimes unsuccessfully dodging the low-lying roofs of the impossibly crowded living spaces until we reached the room where we could conduct an abbreviated Art Therapy session.

Wandering through the makeshift classroom, I noticed that one boy used his nimble fingers to draw a man shooting a loaded gun and a red doodle of marker labeled “water.” The exercise asked for pupils to include objects that they want in their lives inside of a circle, and all bad things on the outside of the circle.

“Why is water on the bad side of the circle?” I inquired. Looking down at his paper, Kevin replied flatly, “My best friend jumped in the river. He drowned.” His affect communicated the guilt of being unable to save his best friend. As for the man shooting a gun, he explained with eyes still downcast that his family had been robbed at gunpoint, “but everything is okay.”

The most disturbing sight of all was the absence of emotion on his face. Death is routine, it is a constant force in his life.

I reflect on one of the infinite differences between children from the United States and those from Kenya. Overexposure to violent media has led our children to have an aggressive nature. Violence on television has no consequences. The reality in Korogocho of fatal illness and crime has had a desensitizing effect on the children. There is no comparison between seeing death on television and observing death in reality.

I turned to the next page that asked, “What is your greatest dream?” The page revealed a man in a lab coat with a stethoscope around his neck. “Do you want to be a doctor?” I asked rhetorically to fill the silence that had grown since the last page. He nodded his head “yes.”

I asked him to look up and tell me with absolution “I want to be a doctor.”

That would not do it. I needed him to promise me that this was his dream, that no one will change this. He replied again with a nod. I checked through my mental notebook of actions that had a profound impact on me as a child, and quickly decided that a pinky promise was in order.

He chuckled and held out his pinky and repeated, “I want to be a doctor and I will be a doctor.” He kissed his thumb and I kissed mine as is customary for a pinky promise. He looked in my eyes and smiled.

There was a tiny light in the darkness of that city. This is God’s Kingdom. There is hope for more light, and there is work to be done. I may not have walked in Kevin’s shoes that day, but if only for a moment, God took my shoes off and got my feet a little dirty. I still carry the filth of Korogocho on my feet, and don’t plan on rinsing it away. 

 

Korogocho is a slum in the city of Nairobi where 150,000 people live within one square kilometer.  Sanitation is non-existent and the smell of sewage and the smoke of burning trash hangs heavy in the air.  Homes, no more than tiny metal or earthen shacks, are stacked almost on top of one another in a maze of human habitation.

The Greek word we translate as hell is “Gehenna” – Jesus’ reference to a burning trash dump outside of Jerusalem.  Korogocho is a hellish place.

Walking around the streets of Korogocho, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the thought that there is too much evil and suffering for us to make any difference.  “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied over with the pale cast of thought.” 

In the midst of this Gehenna, twelve women receive hair salon training for free so that they might receive careers.  A pastor’s wife named Panina runs a small medical clinic for 350 of the poorest of the poor.  Rosa, a patient of the clinic, volunteers twenty hours a week as a community health worker and receives a bar of soap each month as her thanks.  Vonter, a mother of five and an HIV patient, takes in a sixth child despite her fears of not being able to feed her own children.  Maureen, another patient, finds shelter with her brothers from the man who beat her until she lost her hearing.  Respis, who has bled for three years, will receive the operation she has needed - free of charge - this coming Tuesday.

The truth is that light shines in the darkness, and the darkness shall not overcome it. 

Tonight these words from Psalm 139 have new meaning for me:

“Where can I go from your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence?  If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in hell, you are there.  If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.”

This morning we visited the Joy Children’s Home, the orphanage our congregation has envisioned for over a year.  Walking through the halls of this beautiful, expansive home, I could imagine children running, playing and laughing within its walls.  There was a dream-like quality to our visit, as though at any moment, we might wake and discover ourselves overrun with children, mothers, families.

While the home won’t open until August, much work has already been done.  Initial renovations are complete, three “mothers” have completed their three-month training, and the first 15 children have been selected.

One of those is baby Emmanuel, whose name means “God with us.”  I was able to hold Emmanuel this afternoon, and I was present when he and his new mother, Joyce, met for the first time.  Emmanuel was abandoned at birth on the grounds of Nazareth hospital, and he has spent his first five weeks of life orphaned in the pediatric ward.  Today, he left the hospital, not as an orphan, but as a son. 

In Matthew 18, Jesus says, “Whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name, welcomes me.”

Emmanuel is well named.

There are so many children in horrific situations here, and it is so easy to be overwhelmed by a sense of hopelessness amidst the poverty, disease and abuse.  But these children are not orphans or strangers to us.  They are our sons and our daughters - they are our sisters and brothers - they are children of the King.  Our King says, “Your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost.”  Today, one that was lost is now found.  Today, angels rejoice.  Today, with us God has a home.

Many of us have had the honor of going on home visits with the counselors from the Holy Family Center.  There was one patient that stood out to me while on the visits.  Her name was Susan and she was HIV (+). She is  a young single mother of three children ages 9, 4, & 2 1/2 months. Susan is raising her children alone in a small shack while performing odd jobs for people making less then $2 a day. We spent about an hour with Susan discussing her children, medicines for her illness, and other psychosocial needs.  As we sat there, in my head I thought, how can I, a young 27 year old woman for Virginia who has an abundance of resources relate to this to this woman? What do we really have in common? The session wrapped up & at the end I asked Susan if I could pray with her. I grabbed her hand and we prayed together. After the prayer she looked up at me with a big smile on her face, the first smile I had seen from her all day. She then told me how much that meant to her and how important her faith was. As she was talking it finally hit me, a little whisper from God, “Shelly you are just like this woman”.  Though I may not know the poverty, brokenness, or sickness, I hold the same hope inside of me that Susan holds. At that moment I was humbled. Though Susan didn’t have many possessions she was overflowing with hope, displaying the joy and peace needed to trust in the Lord.  I thanked Susan for our time spent together and as we walked out I couldn’t help but smile knowing how much Jesus loves us all.

 

 

If you are a member of our congregation, you have heard about Alice over the years.  Alice is 14 and has AIDS and TB.  Both her parents died from AIDS, so Alice lives with her grandparents right outside the Nazareth Hospital compound in a small shanty with no electricity.

I didn’t give Alice much thought as I packed to come to Kenya.  I knew I would meet her on the porch of our house, along with all the children who gather there after school.  Sure enough, our first day here, Alice arrived as expected. The porch was filled to overflowing with children when we were introduced to each other.  Despite all the many faces full of self-assurance, it was obvious immediately that Alice reigned at the top of the porch pecking order.

I was lost in the pure joy of this after-school chaos when this confident young girl, way too tiny for her age but somehow larger than life, looked me square in the eye, and said, “You and me, photo.”  It was in that moment that our hearts connected.  

The next afternoon, Alice reappeared as we set off on a late afternoon walk to the tea fields. Jim put Alice in charge of the candy bag with strict instructions to follow the rules – one piece of candy for each child who we encountered along the way; no candy for adults.  Away we went, her hand in mine, bags slung over each of our shoulders – hers filled with candy, mine with a camera.

The walk through the tea fields is indescribably beautiful.  It is also a long one, and my heart broke a dozen times along the way.  Alice suggested I might like to make her a birthday cake one day; she has never had one.  She told me she does her homework by candlelight.  She asked me to send her a copy of the “you and me” photo.  Alice coughed a lot as we climbed the hills at a fast pace, stopping only to tie her shoes or to dispense candy to the gaggles of dirt poor shack children we met along the way.  

Despite my broken heart, it was glorious day. The tea fields were captivatingly beautiful.  The sun was warm on our backs.  Alice and I shared our life stories and fell in love.  And as fast as my heart would break, God would mend it through the touch of her hand in mine.

Jim spoke to us this week of “compassionate emptiness.”  He asked, where in this pilgrimage have you emptied yourself of everything, existing only to receive as much as possible from God?  For me, it happened in the tea fields with a beautiful child of God named Alice.  Where today will you be empty enough to receive the gift of compassionate emptiness?  And maybe even an accidental friend?

 

Yesterday I journeyed out with two Tree of Lives workers, Doreen and Josephine to the slums for a home visit.  Three hours from Nazareth and several Matatu rides later, we finally arrived at the home of Joseph.  Joseph was HIV positive and also had suffered from a CVA, leaving him with impaired speech and difficulty walking.  Joseph lost his wife 3 years ago and he and his three children lived in a single metal room.  In addition to housing his family, this small room also held a store in which the proceeds were used to feed the family.  Joseph was a man of little possessions, however had more faith than any one person I have ever met.  He was thankful to God for all he had and truly trusted him with the healing of his disease.  Joseph received food packets from Tree of Lives to supplement what he was unable to provide for his children.   When learning I was from Norfolk, his face immediately lit up and he couldn’t thank me enough of all our church family and Trees of Lives had provided him with.  The small amount of food included in these food packets made a huge difference in Joseph’s life.  We hear so much about Tree of Lives in Jim Wood’s sermons each Sunday morning, but you can never imagine the true blessing of this ministry until seeing the smile on someone’s face like Joseph.